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Double trouble: Psych journal prints PTSD paper twice

Or not so original. Last November, the journal published a study by two California researchers which looked at the possible effects of post-traumatic stress disorder on physical well-being in older women – and found no evidence of such a link.

It issued a retraction earlier this month, which included the following:

Taylor & Francis would like to apologise unreservedly for any confusion caused and note that this was not the fault of the authors. As such the article is hereby retracted.

Perhaps the journal’s editors felt some pressure to fill its pages, since it will be going from six issues per year to eight in 2010. The editors referred our inquiries to the publisher, who has yet to respond.

Co-author Luciana Laganà, a clinical psychologist at California State University Northridge, says she learned of the duplicate publication by chance:

They sent me the copy of the issue in which I was re-published as a courtesy to the author. I then contacted them to tell them that this article was already published. … They apologized for the duplication and were very supportive.

Hewing to custom, the abstracts of the repeated articles end with the following caveat:

additional research on larger samples is needed to corroborate these findings.